ABSTRACT

The international approach usually assumes that foreign aid is “an economic instrument of foreign policy.” The empirical research can be divided into two broad classifications; the first group provides a limited analysis by focusing on one model, or strategy to explain the allocation of United States bilateral foreign aid. The second group is more comprehensive, in the sense that they operationalized several models and test competing explanations. Foreign aid, as a tool of foreign policy, represents a political act by the donor state directed toward the recipient state. As a consequence the foreign policy explanation defines all forms of assistance as being political with only pure humanitarian aid a being per-se non-political. According to Deutsch, the primary foreign policy objective of any nation is to insure national survival through the promotion of its own security interests. The promotion of liberal democracy throughout the ±third world’ provides the most enduring safeguard to Western security.